I've heard that the steering wheels used in some Tuckers were made by and for FoMoCo. Tucker made a request to buy them from Ford, and Mr. Ford himself made a present of them to Tucker. It would seem to me that Ford at least didn't consider Tucker a serious threat.
That car that rolled during testing was just sold recently at auction,along with a ton of spares like a motor and major body parts of another Tucker. I am almost sure I read it on HAMB recently... They showed pics of some of the repairs done over the years, but some sheetmetal was still off, like the roof skin?
Was in the other Tucker thread, about a Tucker stock car was the start of it. I'm sure there's not 18,000 Tucker threads on the HAMB so about a 3-second search should bring it right up. There's a link in there to a page with all known info to ALL of the Tucker cars - one was burned and later buried under someone's garage, one is a bare frame in someone's side yard, and there is one that dissapeared in the late '50s but they think it was scrapped. About the only one that they don't know where it is today.
The Movie was great, and made me angry at the same time, much like the recent movie "Flash of Genius": "The secrecy at that time between corporations was a paramount thing. Rumors would get out, but usually they would come through the DAC [Detroit Athletic Club] and, maybe, a vendor, but vendors were much more disciplined then than they later became. So we could find very little that was going on with the other companies, and this was good. I'd like to see more of it today. We developed that whole line -- the 8 and the 6 Commodore series and the Super 6 series -- without one night of overtime, and there were only three involved in that whole program. Q: Who were they? A: Bill Kirby, Frank Spring , and Art Kibiger who was our studio head. Then Don Butler was there for awhile, and he has written a book, which I haven't seen yet, on the Hudson . He was a stylist there. The decision * making aspect was more involved with Kibiger and myself and Bill Kirby. We did the finalizing of the situation. We didn't have a test track. All the other companies had a test facility. The Hudson developed -- we only had one prototype for awhile -- and the car was driven up North every night with the change of crews. During that period I had a neighbor who was the head of the Fuel Charger Corporation. He later became chief engineer for the all-new car --the Tucker Torpedo. While working on the Hudson , I also got involved a bit on the Tucker thing. I wanted to qualify for that, so I did a few things, especially, in the later part of the Hudson. Q: Was it for Alex Tremulis? A: No. I met Alex Tremulis down in Chicago when I was going to work for them. When I went down there, that was just the day after they closed the place up. Alex was sitting alone with a dead corporation around him and all these unfinished cars on the line. I remember seeing that. I knew Preston Tucker. He was totally misrepresented during that period, because of that political situation. They tried to discount him and his efforts. That car was a very fine automobile, and it would have been a good thing. " This is from a 1985 interview, before the 1988 release of "Tucker: The Man and His Dream"... Taken from: http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Design/Andrews_interview.htm (See the thread I posted: Interviews With 50's Automobile Designers) http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?p=3528526#post3528526 -
I believe the steering wheels were actually from a Lincoln Zephyr. I can add a little more Tucker trivia. The hoods were stamped in Bradley, Illinois in a building that was occupied by David Bradley..a tractor manufacturer who's items were sold through Sears.
Just wanted to let folks know that we posted an update to the convertible Tucker article today that includes more information on the background of the car and photos of the restoration process. You can CLICK HERE to read the article on OldCarsWeekly
Those tucker had flat (horizontally opposed) sixes though. they were not very tall, just may be workable. but good luck finding or building a tucker flat six...
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